


Cross-Fandom Analysis: “I’m Bad, and That’s Good”

by ArgentDandelion



Category: Undertale (Video Game), Wreck-It Ralph (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Handplates (Undertale), Angst, Character Analysis, Compare and Contrast, Dubious Ethics, Gen, Nonfiction, Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-09-28 06:04:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20421134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentDandelion/pseuds/ArgentDandelion
Summary: Analyzes Wreck-it Ralph and W.D. Gaster of Handplates' status as "bad guys" (antagonists/villains), with the theme of how their actions align with the Bad Guy Affirmation (from Wreck-it Ralph) in very different ways.





	Cross-Fandom Analysis: “I’m Bad, and That’s Good”

_ **Or, “How to Not Die by Falling into Not-Lava”.** _

**Thesis: Ralph’s speech of “I’m bad, and that’s good. I will never be good, and that’s not bad. There’s no one I’d rather be…than me.” also applies to W.D. Gaster of Handplates, but in an opposite moral direction.**

_(For simplicity’s sake, this article will not be considering the sequel Ralph Wrecks the Internet)_

##  **Ralph Context**

> **Ralph:** “Sure must be nice, being the good guy.”  
**Ralph:** “Here’s the thing. I don’t want to be the bad guy anymore.”  
**Clyde** (the orange ghost in Pac-Man): “Ralph, Ralph. We get it. But we can’t change who we are. The sooner you accept that, the better off your game and your life will be.”

**History**

In the film Wreck-it Ralph, Ralph, who’s been the “bad guy” of a Donkey Kong-esque arcade game for decades, doesn’t want to be the “bad guy” any more. He’s tired of getting defeated by his game’s protagonist, Fix-it Felix, over and over and being excluded and not appreciated by everyone in his game. He doesn’t seem to have any friends; when he shows up to Bad Anon at the film’s beginning, it’s his first time.

In his game, Felix gets a medal for his heroism after defeating Ralph; to prove he can be a good guy, Ralph ventures to another game to get himself a medal. In the process, he accidentally brings a mindless killer robot to the helpless game _Sugar Rush_.  
Though thought destroyed, the robot actually survived and multiplied underground. He also loses his newfound medal, and in his quest to get it back, he befriends one of _Sugar Rush_’s characters: Vanellope.

**Motives**

Ralph’s bad-guy status was externally-imposed: he was created for the role of being the bad guy in an arcade game, and the game literally puts words in his mouth to accomplish this. Refusing to play out his role or even just leaving his game for too long comes with the risk of making the arcade game seem broken, and if people think it’s broken, it will be unplugged and its characters will become homeless; therefore it is selfish.

Ralph’s initial motives are selfish. The other characters in the game Wreck-it Ralph don’t believe he can ever get a medal because he’ll never be any more than a bad guy. When he gets a medal (by basically cheating rather than earning it), he figures he’ll come back to the admiration of the other game characters.

**Execution of Motives**

While Ralph’s initial motives for helping Vanellope are selfish, (he wants his hero’s medal back and helping Vanellope win a race will do it) he nonetheless does some kind, altruistic (arguably heroic) things to help Vanellope even before he gets his medal back.

When the other Sugar Rush characters harass Vanellope and tear apart her homemade cart, Ralph (who doesn’t even like her, at this point) charges down and scares the other racers off. He’ll get the medal back if Vanellope wins a race, but Vanellope doesn’t have a car or some place to practice. So he uses his super-strength to break into a car-making minigame facility and help Vanellope make a car, and also creates a racetrack for her to practice on.

Later, he unexpectedly gets his medal back before Vanellope races. The film’s antagonist also tricks him into believing that if Vanellope does win a race, Sugar Rush’s plug will be pulled, causing everyone to flee the game and become homeless game characters. Yet, Vanellope, as a glitch, cannot escape her game: she’ll die.

Ralph thus wrecks Vanellope’s cart so she can’t race, avoiding the outcome that will result in her death. (The scene is emotionally devastating; the author still always fast-forwards through that scene.) Later on, he breaks into prison to rescue Felix, the hero of the game Wreck-it Ralph, for Felix’s magic hammer can fix anything and thus can reassemble the remains of Vanellope’s car.

**Speech Interpretation**

At the film’s climax, Ralph learns a mindless killer robot (a Cy-Bug) he accidentally brought in from another game survived the crash of the escape pod that brought him to Sugar Rush. Not only that, but it multiplied into a massive army, in a game where there are no built-in controls to its spread. Vanellope, as a glitch character, cannot escape Sugar Rush. The film’s villain holds Ralph high in the air, trying to get him to watch Vanellope die.  
That’s when Ralph realizes he’s above a mountain of Mentos and lava-like diet cola. He escapes the villain’s clutches, intending to punch the entire layer of Mentos in the mountain into the boiling diet cola: the eruption would draw the Cy-Bugs in like moths to a flame and destroy them.

When Ralph is falling to his (presumed) death, it’s likely he believes he’s brought a lot of suffering onto Vanellope, such as bringing a Cy-Bug in (accidentally) and breaking her cart to start with. It’s likely he believes his sacrifice is the only way to save her.

Therefore, Ralph’s interpretation of the Bad Guy Affirmation would be: “I’ve messed up, and I’m doomed to be a villain. I accept that. At least Vanellope cares about me [he looks at his candy medal during this line], and this is the only thing I can do to save her.”

* * *

## Handplates Context

> **Gaster:** “It does not matter if they _[the test subjects]_ can understand. It does not matter what they look like, or if they can think, or what they feel.”  
**Gaster:** “To even consider…_[abandoning the experiment and raising the test subjects more-or-less normally]_…such selfish sentimentality gets people killed. There is only one choice.”

**History**

In the _Undertale_ fan comic Handplates (by Zarla-s), monsters were sealed underground with a magical barrier after losing a war millennia ago. When his son was killed by humans, Asgore, king of the monsters, declared war on humanity. He declared that any humans who fell into monsters’ underground realm would be killed, and their souls used to break the magical barrier keeping them all underground.  
However, Asgore is a kind pushover of a king, who once adopted human child himself. Going through with his declaration causes him a lot of emotional suffering. To ease his pain, the royal scientist W.D. Gaster tries to find some way to break or bypass the barrier without having the king kill any humans.

To this end, he cut out disks of bone from his hands to grow into “living tools” for his experiments. Yet, they unexpectedly became sentient monster children, causing some ethical problems.

W.D. Gaster, in some ways, is the opposite of Ralph. Though his whole family (and all other skeletons) were killed off in the war, he was _de facto_ adopted by King Asgore and Queen Toriel, who loved him very much. He grew up to be a scientist, and helped the whole Underground with his inventions. Indeed, he gained the singularly esteemed position of royal scientist, with immense resources for whatever project he needed.

However, like Ralph, W.D. Gaster has very few friends. While he’s been alive for thousands of years (Ralph’s been alive for 30), he seems close to only three people: Alphys, Asgore, and Toriel. (and for most of the comic, he believes Toriel is dead)

**Motives**

W.D. Gaster’s bad-guy status was internally-imposed. Nobody is making him do cruel things. In fact, nobody other than himself and his test subjects even know he’s doing cruel things. He believes he is the only person who can do what he thinks must be done, for the greater good, so his motives are initially altruistic. While his devotion to Asgore and willingness to suffer for monsterkind’s sake is admirable, the way he goes about it is definitely a bad guy thing.

In contrast to Ralph, W.D. Gaster’s initial motives weren’t selfish. He wanted to free all monsters from their underground realm and soothe Asgore’s suffering however he could. Nobody considered him a “bad guy”: he was already admired and had people who cared about him.

**Execution of Motives**

After a brief period of a more-or-less happy childhood/toddler-hood (Gaster was emotionally unavailable, but not hostile), Gaster believed his “objectivity” was “at risk of being compromised”. He drilled in metal plates into the test subjects’ hands, starting a long chain of very painful experiments.  
Sometimes, he would perform these experiments not to serve his greater, ostensibly noble goal, but for no other reason than his own curiosity. (e.g., breaking one of Papyrus’s bones to see how long it would take to heal) Indeed, while he told himself he would do what he needed to do (including very painful experiments), sometimes his cruelty (e.g., not giving anesthesia) just isn’t pragmatic.

**Speech Interpretation**

Therefore, Gaster’s interpretation of the Bad Guy Affirmation would be: “I am, and am doomed to be, callous, unloving, and unworthy of love in turn, but that is good: it means I am able to do whatever is necessary to remove Asgore’s need to kill again, and free monsterkind. My actions are unforgivable, but I have no choice to turn away from this course: in the end monsters will be freed, and I am willing to accept any punishment afterward for that goal. I do what I must, because I am the only one who can.”

* * *

## Final Comparison and Results

  
(Ralph gets cake. Gaster not only does not get cake, but is erased from reality and forgotten by everyone.)

Both have an extended falling sequence into not-lava: lava-like boiling diet cola for Ralph, and magic “lava” (it’s unclear) in a power plant for Gaster. Both have someone who knows them well trying to save them during this sequence; for Ralph, it’s Vanellope, and for Gaster, it’s one of his test subjects, Papyrus (2-P).

Vanellope uses her glitch powers to glitch through the walls of the mountain on her cart, saving Ralph. (Incidentally, Ralph helped her with her glitch powers and cart driving.) Papyrus (called 2-P) tries to save Gaster from falling into the not-lava using gravity-altering blue magic. However, Gaster told him earlier that if he and his brother ever tried to use blue magic on him, they’d be severely punished, and Gaster proceeds to “demonstrate” by breaking quite a lot of Papyrus’s bones. This experience makes Papyrus hesitate, and so he’s too late to save Gaster.

Yet, despite sharing these similarities, their motives, character development, and actions are almost the opposite of each other. Ralph fell to begin with out of a heroic sacrifice to save Vanellope, while Gaster fell because one of his test subjects, Sans (1-S), who resented him for his cruelty, shoved him off a catwalk in the power plant. This, while the Bad Guy affirmation applies to both of them equally, one shows the descent of a “good guy” into villainy, and another shows the ascent of a “bad guy” into heroism.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my [Tumblr](https://argentdandelion.tumblr.com/). Feel free to comment on this article there or here.


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